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Artist's Rendition of Early Settlers Facing Danger on Bear
Island.
Continued
from page 4
In those days, basic household staples included rum and
cider. Sometimes after rowing her boat to The Weirs,
Dolly would load a barrel of cider or rum into her skiff
by herself. When she arrived home, she would lift the keg
overhead and drink from the bung hole. But, in spite of
her toughness. Dolly had a compassionate side: on stormy
nights, she placed candles in her windows to serve
as beacons in case a fisherman lost his bearings. Other
times, she gave up her own bed to lost hunters, while she
slept in the open loft of her shack.
Another example of her compassionate nature is the tale
of Charles Prescott's and William Neal's trip to the island
one winter to check on some woodchoppers, who had been
hired to cut wood on the island, as told in Hanaford's
Meredith Genealogy:
Their spry stepper horse was transporting
them over the ice, via Stonedam Island when suddenly both
horse and sleigh went through the ice. The horse gave
a spring and landed on a rock and the men climbed out
on it, pulled the sleigh out, started out again and landed
on Bear Island. They went to Aunt Dolly Nichols' for shelter,
feeling pretty chilly after their dip. She at once came
to their rescue, took the men and wet horse into her kitchen,
helped dry the horse and then made some hot drinks for
the men. All came out none the worse for their scare,
so the story goes.
Eventually, Dolly grew too feeble to stay
on the island and moved to live with her relatives, the
Clarks, on Meredith Neck and then to the Hiram Plummer house.
Finally, in the mid-1860s, Dolly was forced to go to the
Meredith Town Poor Farm, where she died at the age of 79.
Her grave is an unmarked spot near the Winnipesaukee Colony
Club off the Meredith Neck Road.
South of the landing at Dolly Point are remnants of the
pound where she kept sheep, and later, cattle, waiting for
the owners to claim them. Until a few years ago, her well
with the original well-sweep, a long pole on a pivot with
a bucket at one end for raising the water, also stood on
her land. Northwest of Dolly Point, about 100 feet from
the shore in a pine grove, is a cemetery with nine graves
of settlers of Bear Island, marked only by small fieldstones
with no lettering.
Continuing northward from the graveyard, one reaches the
narrow "waist" of the island called The Carry.
Indians carried their canoes across this spot to avoid the
long paddle around East Bear, and if they arrived late, they camped at The Carry for the night.
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